Plan well for maps

Maps are a great way to illustrate an issue, yet they can be fraught with challenges.
Many advocacy and information campaigns use maps to get collaborators involved - reporting on stockouts of medicines, or incidents of violence, for example. Maps are very helpful for outbreaks of disease, or in cases of disaster. Animated maps might help you explore geo-specific trends.

But there are some key questions to consider before you start - like getting access to an accurate map and how much it will cost. There are plenty of disputed borders in the world and tracking those takes time and money, so map owners typically want to be paid. Free maps might carry branding or other limitations, though there are a bunch of useful free options available.

Once you have a map, you need to consider how to get reliable data and how you will keep the map going. Fundamentally, how does the map fit into your communication?

In a blog about mapping violence against women, advocacy specialist Dirk Slater of Fabriders explores options including the mapping tools Ushahidi and Crowdmap. Dirk also discusses some key issues that you should consider before spending time and money on your project:

• How can mapping support your campaigns and missions - how will you use it, how will it be maintained?
• Take security very seriously: consider how to get quality data but avoid identifying people where information is sensitive. This inclues verifying the people who provide information.
• Consider the cultural relevance of maps: do your audiences use maps, and how do they read them? Do they expect street map view, or satellite view? Topographical or political?
• Consider how the map will be used. Will it show off your data to good effect? Will it influence people? How does the map connect with your strategy? 

Dirk also provides links to some further resources: questions to ask yourself before deploying Ushahidi, cleaning data, how to use icons, and how to verify users.

See: What I’ve learned about mapping violence

Simple data journalism tools

The Guardian's Datablog continues to serve as a beacon to data-focused journalists and others trying to use numbers to help tell stories.

This interview by O'Reilly's Strata blog includes reference to several of the key tools that the Datablog uses; some of them disarmingly simple: Excel, TextEdit, Google Fusion Tables, Google Spreadsheets,Timetric, Many Eyes, Adobe Illustrator, and Tableau.

Link

Best Free Tools To Make Infographics

Here is a great selection of tools for presenting data in visually compelling ways. 


As Fast Company notes, "it's not enough to simply write about data any longer; the world wants visuals."

A set recommended by Fast Company:

Many Eyes, by IBM;

Google Public Data Explorer;

Hohli for venn diagrams and scatter plots etc.;

Wordle, for word clouds; and

Visual.ly for not only creating, but also sharing infographics.

Link to post: The 5 Best Free Tools For Making Slick Infographics | Fast Company


Another great set of tools can be found here.

"Datavisualization.ch Selected Tools is a collection of tools that we... work with on a daily basis and recommend warmly... (and) will make your life easier, creating meaningful and beautiful data visualizations."

This list includes Web apps such as Stanford University's DataWrangler, for data cleaning and transformation, GeoCommons, a public community and set of tools to access, visualize and analyze data with maps, and Impure/Quadrigram, a visual programming language to gather, process and visualize information.

Read more about this collection at The Next Web. 


See also:

• 10 ways to report data better
• Infographic insights
• Infographics need stories
• Big data for development 

Infographics need stories

Data is a story waiting to be told, and an infographic that brings data to life should start and end with the story. Keep the audience in mind and stay focused, and you should be on the right track.
Some quick tips in a blog here by Mark Johnstone. The linked blog by Ian Lurie is also of relevance, wherein Lurie discusses information vs knowledge.


Johnstone starts with the audience:
Who are they?
What can you say that is valuable to them?
Why should they be interested?
Would they want to hear more?

He also recommends that you try out your ideas for an infographic by discussing the concept with other people first. "Tell people about it next time you’re in the pub.  And watch their reaction.  Don’t listen, watch!  You’ll know in a second if it needs more work."

Lastly, he recommends you focusing on the audience more than the information you want to convey.

What do they want to know?
What do they need to know?
How could they benefit from thinking about things in a different way?
How can you help?
"In short, don’t think about what you have to say, but what you have to deliver!"


See also:
The 5 best free tools for making slick infographics
10 ways to report data better
Infographic insights

Big data for development

Communications can provide insights into poverty, so studying communications patterns can be helpful for designing development policies and programmes. That’s just one point emerging from a study at Harvard University’s Engineering Social Systems programme which is looking into ‘big data’, the new buzz word in academia, government, development and media circles.

And they are not alone. Academics from New York University and the University of New South Wales have published a series of ‘provocations’ to spark discussion about access to data and how it is used. “Will large-scale analysis of DNA help cure diseases? Or will it usher in a new wave of medical inequality?”


The United Nations has launched the project Global Pulse, which aims to evaluate masses of data in order to generate early warning signals about developmental challenges, ranging from crop failures to social discontent that can trigger civil conflict.

Big business is also hot on the trail. Mckinsey & Co. have published a paper on ‘the next frontier of data’. Of note, they don’t define big data by the size, since what is big today will be manageable before long: “big data refers to datasets whose size is beyond the ability of typical database software tools to capture, store, manage and analyze”. With the benefits of exploiting such data predicted to exceed $300 billion to the US health sector annually, it is no wonder McKinsey is taking interest.

Ultimately it is all about you and me. Big data reflects the increasing capacity to track our every move, especially online. From spending patterns and vacation histories, to web browsing and more, the interests and habits of the greater public have never before been so well documented. It is opening a big opportunity for planners and policymakers, as well as marketers, strategists and also those who would exploit the information for less agreeable purposes – legal or otherwise. It is thus important and potentially very valuable that legislators and regulators both support open access to data for legitimate research, but also necessary to protect personal privacy, safeguard the integrity of data and set standards on its collection and the application of findings.

Further reading of interest: Bloomberg Business Week, on the dangers of insufficient information.

Publisher Tim O’Reilly on Google+ reports on a recent discussion of success factors, including the power of visualising  data. 

See also:

• 10 ways to report data better
• The 5 best free tools for making slick infographics
• Infographic insights
• Infographics need stories

10 ways to report data better

Turning numbers and trends into stories and knowledge can be challenging to journalists and scientists alike, but also fascinating for their audiences. A blog by Troy Thibodeaux, Associated Press journalist and blogger on the  Poynter University journalism website, provides a detailed and helpful list of tools to probe and present data.

The tools are divided into the following categories:
1. Spreadsheets, for basic presentation and analysis
2. SQL, for relational databases and more
3. Data cleaning tools, for removing impurities
4. Visualization tools, for the big picture
5. Mapping software, to see where you are
6. Scripting language, to help present this information
7. Web framework, for getting it online
8. Editing tools, to write code, and more
9. Revision control, to spot mistakes and save backups
10. Document analysis tools, to handle large document sets as data, provide an interface and overcome formats like PDFs.

See also:

• The 5 best free tools for making slick infographics
• Infographic insights
• Infographics need stories
• Big data for development

Infographic insights

A good infographic can convey a message faster than text, tables and conventional figures.

There are many styles to choose from and creative minds are searching for new ways to help tell complex stories more easily. Some efforts fall woefully short: simply bundling facts and figures together with artwork is not as effective as a well thought out figure or storyboard. Ideally, the graphic, poster or animation will contain the minimum information needed to convey its message, put things in perspective and perhaps even entertain and 'wow' the audience.

The Guardian, UK has blogged about this and uses infographics extensively in its award-winning datablog. I'm a fan of their contributor David McCandless of Information is Beautiful. He has helped pioneer this field despite - or perhaps because of - being self-taught.

Such is the popularity of infographics that some job applicants are even adopting them as the basis for job applications or CVs. Commentators continue to debate this approach, but Vizualize.me has even helped automate the process.

Here are some places to find interesting infographics. Suggest others in the comments below!

Visual.ly
Good.is infographics
Fast Company daily infographics
Daily Infographic 

Cool Infographics

See also:
The 5 best tools for making slick infographics
10 ways to report data better
Big data for development

Mapping for results

The World Bank continues to explore ways to promote development through use of its extensive data collection. Mapping For Results is focused on visualising the location of various development projects, as a means of exploring the relationships and results.

Visualising data is an increasingly popular way to get your head around sometimes complex issues. The trick is to keep it meaningful and obvious, while competing for attention against many other visual distractions.

The World Bank explains this initiative on its website:

"The main objectives of the program are (i) to support the monitoring and reporting of results by providing users with an analytical tool to analyze and visualize the geographic location of Bank-funded projects at the sub-national level ; (ii) to improve aid effectiveness by enhanced transparency and accountability of donor-funded operations and (iii) to strengthen the participation of multiple stakeholders, including civil society organizations and citizen groups in the Bank’s work at the country level."